Artificial fingernail tips, a desirable fashion (if not also functional) accessory, exist in various forms. A customized artificial fingernail can be made to fit the exact contour and dimensions of a natural fingernail. This offers considerable advantages in comfort, appearance, and durability over non-custom fit fingernails commonly available. However, custom fitting an artificial fingernail poses special challenges and problems. Commonly used methods for production of artificial fingernails are very labor intensive, time consuming and require significant skill.
One method for production of artificial fingernails is called “nail sculpturing.” In this method a pre-made artificial fingernail tip is attached to the tip of a real finger by an adhesive or a supporting sheet. The supporting sheet is attached just under the tip of a real finger, then a thermoset material (mainly acrylic type) is then applied little by little onto the natural fingernail from the cuticle of the natural finger and sculpted to cover the whole artificial fingernail tip or a portion of the supporting sheet, such that a uniform extended surface is created. This process is repeated for each finger. Once the thermoset material dries naturally or under ultraviolet lighting, intensive and abrasive filing is applied to create a desired shape for each fingernail. Since this method builds up an artificial fingernail by adding material little by little manually, it gained the name of “nail sculpture.” The last step of this process is to paint the top surface of the artificial fingernails with nail polish to display the desired color or pattern.
Another method to create artificial fingernails is called “nail wrapping.” In this method, fabric pieces are cut off and glued onto a natural fingernail. After a few layers of fabric are glued and dried, coats of filler material are applied to create a continuous uniform surface. After intensive filing to the desired shape, the nail can be polished. This process has to be repeated on each finger. Both nail sculpturing and nail wrapping expose the user and nail technicians to fumes, chemical liquids, and filing debris, which can present health and respiratory problems. In addition, the growth of a natural nail will create a gap between its cuticle and applied artificial fingernail since the artificial fingernail, once applied, is bonded onto the natural nail surface. This gap needs to be filled regularly, and this process requires a great deal of time and money.
A less expensive alternative to the nail sculpturing and nail wrapping methods is the pre-made artificial fingernail tips with nail art already in place that are capable of being pasted onto the natural fingernail. However, such mass-produced artificial fingernail tips have limited choices in their shapes, lengths, styles and fit. A person's fingernail is different from another person's in its cuticle, width, length, and three-dimensional (3D) shape. Therefore, mass-produced artificial fingernail tips cannot fit exactly to a user's natural fingernail. Usually, such an artificial fingernail tip is forced onto a natural fingernail surface, and glued on with an adhesive. This poses the problem that such an artificial fingernail tip can be peeled easily. In addition, this type of artificial fingernail tip is usually recognized as false due to the unfitted shape at the margins.
Another option that solves the problems encountered in the existing pre-made artificial fingernail tips and the nail sculpturing and nail wrapping methods as described above, is to custom manufacture every artificial fingernail tip. This process may consist of creating a plaster mold from a series of precise impressions of a natural fingernail, then the mold can be used to create an artificial fingernail by either injection molding or casting. The creation of artificial nails by using this process is still time consuming, costly and requires considerable work to turn the rough cast into the finished product. It is also impractical to perform this process in a nail salon environment.
Other proposed processes require contact with the person's fingernail to measure the fingernail for custom fitting. These systems would inherently be less accurate than non-touch measuring systems and require a mechanical apparatus that can be prone to malfunction.